A very personal, and eclectic, collection of wargaming plots and projects; battles and campaigns... with pictures; lotsa pictures....

Monday, December 26, 2011

ACW Riverine -Under Construction... (Part II)

Above: the first of a number of Confederate steam rams/ gun boats. After all this time, I still haven't figured out how to build the 'walking beam' arrangement. It looks as though this vessel is missing a bowsprit, too. The masts could stand revisiting: the topmasts look rather too thick, as well.

This was intended to be a fairly 'generic' sort of vessel. More CSA gunboats, armed fore and aft with rifled ordnance. Well... they would be if I had got around to completing those guns...Rather than build specific gunboats, often named for Confederate generals and which survived maybe one or two serious actions, I gave them other names. The letters on the funnels serve as aides-memoire for Atchafalaya, Pontchartrain and Maurepas.Here we have a generic Union vessel that might be a troop transport or maybe one of Col. Ellet's steam rams. This was made on the basis of a wood engraving, I think from Battles and LeadersAnother steamboat that might serve as a transport or as a steam ram. I don't recall what the basis for this vessel was - I think it might have been a picture of someone else's model. At the time I was building these, information was very hard to come by as to dimensions, design - even colours. At that, even professional modellers apparently have to make guesses as to what these vessel really looked like...I think a little touching up might be in order, such as railings around the decks, lifeboats, that sort of thing...